Why Somebody Else Can’t Tell You How To Be Successful And Happy.
By
Bill Cottringer
“Success and happiness are what you get from doing what you have to do to get them.” ~The author.
What do you suppose all these folks have in common?
- All the present living presidents.
- All the academy award winners.
- All the NCAA playoff teams.
- All the soldiers going to or coming back from Iraq.
- All the people who are unemployed.
- All the people who are in relationships.
- All the factory workers and their bosses, teachers and students, doctors and patients, grocery checkout clerks and consumers and volunteers and retirees?
The title to this article minus the first word is the answer. Everyone is looking for the quickest, sure-cure, zero-gravity way to more success and happiness; but the reality of the matter is, nobody can tell you how to be successful and happy. That is something you have to figure out all on your own. You have to personally discover what these two things mean for you and learn the best ways to get them.
There are literally libraries of tried and true written prescriptions guaranteeing you an abundance of success and happiness when you learn and use the offered techniques. The trouble is, they really don’t stick that well. Personally I have been worked on and mentored by the best from Mt. Fujiyama to Big Sur to the Australian outback to The Secret; and after 65 years I have to honestly confess that I am still working on applying all this wisdom for better results.
I think we all need to find out what success and happiness are for ourselves and then pursue these things through the trial and error methods we call life. Sure we can get good ideas that have enormous consequences towards these ends, but external definitions and solutions usually fade until we incorporate them internally from our own experience in living them in our own lives.
All we are really doing is trying to re-discover the pre-established rules of success and happiness in the game of life; but they are so obvious that it usually takes a long time to actually see what you are looking at. Somebody else telling you is not what you really want. And of course knowing something and then actually doing it are two different things on a scale of hard to harder.
Here is the best advice about success and happiness I can offer:
1. Success and happiness are what they are to you in your own mind and heart only. What other people think only matters when you let it. And you can’t make others think you are successful and happy until you convince yourself on these things well enough to walk your talk without a whole lot of talk.
2. These things seem to grow larger as you grow and expand you awareness of the realities around you. Any solution you are inclined to want to totally embrace like there are no more second chances, is probably only a tentative half-truth at best. Always be careful of over-popularized gimmicks and quick cures.
3. Their opposites—failure and unhappiness—are only temporary resting spots that eventually teach and inspire you on to exchange the rain for the sunshine. It is never fun without an umbrella in a fierce rainstorm, but they never last forever and the sun eventually starts shining. It just takes the one thing we are all short on these days—patience.
William Cottringer, Ph.D. is President of Puget Sound Security in Bellevue, WA., along with being a Sport Psychologist, Business Success Coach, Photographer and Writer living in the mountains of North Bend. He is author of several business and self-development books, including, Re-Braining for 2000 (MJR Publishing), The Prosperity Zone (AuthorLink Press), You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too (Executive Excellence), “The Bow-Wow Secrets” (Wisdom Tree), “Do What Matters Most”and “P” Point Management” (Atlantic Book Publishers), “Reality Repair Rx” (Publish America) and “Reality Repair” (coming shortly) Bill can be reached for comments or questions at (425) 454-5011 or bcottringer.pssp.net
well said
You are right on the money here.
Continued success
Barbara Henry